In some fuel cell based power generators, hydrogen is extracted from a fuel in the presence of water and then is introduced into a fuel cell to produce electricity. Power generators based on hydrogen generators and proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells may also have difficulty in providing increased power levels for sustained periods of time for selected portable devices. Fuel cell based power generators may provide higher energy density than conventional power sources like batteries, but may also have difficulty with high discharges, slow startup, and an inability to provide pulses of current. High costs of manufacture have also prevented wide commercialization.
Many electronic devices have intermittent and widely varying power requirements from essentially zero to short pulses as high as a few Watts. These power requirements make it difficult to design a fuel cell for a wide variety of applications.